Fourteen-year-old Jasmin longs to be near her biological mother, Eva. Following her mother’s release from prison, an excursion into the country together becomes a first test for the fledgling mother-daughter relationship.
They smoke, dance and stroll together – the mood is promising. But time and again, it is revealed that their needs and expectations are light years apart. For the moment, neither Eva nor Jasmin seem up to the task of fulfilling each other’s quest for identity and support. Talea is Italian and means cion, offshoot, sprout.

In his directorial debut, cinematographer Michael Schindegger finally meets the neighbors in his own apartment building at NR. 7 on a street in Vienna's second district. He catches up with over 30 years of lives he knew little about despite living in such close proximity to the building's other tenants.
The best stories are often only just a few steps away. Director Michael Schindegger has been living with his father and brothers in an apartment building in the second district of Vienna, Leopoldstadt, at house 'No. 7', for thirty years. However, he hardly knows any of his neighbors. He decides to change all that just before marrying his fiancée and moving out. Camera in hand he rings all of their doorbells and introduces himself to the building's multi-lingual, primarily Jewish residents.

In this real-life GREEN CARD, two young immigrants from the Balkan are prepared to do almost anything to get a European passport, including a paid marriage.
Two young men try to find a solution for their legal residence permit in Austria. They are prepared to do almost anything to get a European passport, including a paid marriage. With almost nothing but 7,000 EUR, they set out to find the woman to realize their dreams — one who will walk them down aisle and then hang around long enough for the divorce.
An odyssey through Vienna's immigrant netherworld, CASH & MARRY is a poignant insight into what it takes to jump the barriers of Fortress Europe.

In THE PHOTOGRAPHER IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel accompany the still very active 90-year old photographer Erich Lessing. Lessing shot iconic photos of historical events in the mid-20th century such as the Hungarian Revolution.
Photographer Erich Lessing documented contemporary history with his pictures. His photograph of Leopold Figl standing on the balcony of the Belvedere palace presenting the signed Austrian State Treaty in May 1955 has been forever etched in Austria’s collective memory. Lessing, a member of the legendary photographic agency Magnum, is one of the most important photojournalists of the post-war era: His pictures of the Hungarian Revolution are contemporary documents that are as artistic as his portraits of European politicians, such as Konrad Adenauer and Nikita Khrushchev. The documentary takes the time to focus on the details - as Lessing believes artistic photography must. Small gestures and brief glimpses give the film a special charm, such as when the great photographer, when tying his tie, laments that the Windsor knot has gone out of fashion, and the fact that he preserves his analogue photographs in a digital archive. The film invites its audience to view the works of this extraordinary artist in a new light as well.

In his internationally acclaimed documentary THE FIVE CARDINAL POINTS, director Fridolin Schönwieser charts the journey of Mexican migrants to the U.S. Despite shared experiences of migration, each person has his individual story. “With a deeply human attitude, which is evidence of his love for the protagonists, the director deals with one of the topics of today: migration. The great respect he has for his fantastic protagonists – real masters of their lives – makes it possible for him to get very close to them without exposing them.” (Jury Decision Innsbruck International Film Festival)
Tres Valles and Kansas City: Two places that couldn’t be more different, they’re connected through individuals like Maria Esther and Miguel. Both of them left their families and homeland behind for a better future and emigrated from Tres Valles to Kansas City. They live on the outskirts of society, struggling with loneliness and rising unemployment, which hits them as illegal immigrants especially hard. Driven by their dreams, they follow the fifth cardinal point: hope for a better life. Feelings of uprootedness in their lives as migrants, of being lost and between two places accompany them.

Venice International Film Festival; Diagonale Festival of Austrian FIlm Graz; International Filmfestival Thessaloniki; Internationales Film Festival Innsbruck; Film Festival Novi Sad; Kansas City Film Festival; Duisburger Filmwoche,; Morelia International Film Festival; Icaro Film Festival; This Human World Vienna; Cine Latino

SNOW WHITE by innovative and versatile Swiss director Samir shows how opposites attract in Zurich's urban music scene: socially conscious rapper Paco and partygirl Nico follow in love, but their different backgrounds put their relationship to the test. “Formally brilliant use of 35mm, home video, splitscreen and fluid montage to convey the characters' inner states.” (cineman.ch)
Party and luxury girl Nico comes from a rich home on Zurich''s “gold coast”. She is used to roam Zurich''s ritzy nightlife with her friend Wanda, partying to exhaustion.
Till she meets Paco (real life hip hop musician Carlos Leal of Sens Unik), a rapper from a working class background, who actually believes in the social criticism he sings about and they fall in love. Nico changes her lifestyle drastically until Paco leaves for a tour with his band and she falls back in her old ways, with dramatic consequences.

KICK OUT YOUR BOSS is a timely film by Austrian doc director Elisabeth Scharang that explores alternative forms of workplace organization. “Warning: this film may change your life!” (Kleine Zeitung)
197 million unemployed people and the widespread phenomenon of physical or mental collapse known as burnout are arguments enough to find alternatives to economic systems whose only goal is the single-minded pursuit of profit maximization.
This documentary gets right into the middle of the current discussions and demonstrates with the help of three examples in Brazil, Serbia and Austria how such systems can work in different ways: workers participation, profit sharing, abolition of hierarchy – they all work without employees having to fear the loss of their livelihood or wage cuts. This film is part of the crossmedia platform kickoutyourboss.com, developed by Scharang and the world sales agency filmdelights, where users can share work stories, experiences and visions.

Swedish born artist-animator Viking Eggeling moved to 1920s Berlin, which at the time was a center of Dadaism. There he created SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE, a silent, abstract animated film that nevertheless emulates music through its use of repetition, contrast, rhythm and graphic depictions of sound. Eggeling's work is a precursor to the music clip and VJing.
A tilted figure, consisting largely of right angles at the beginning, grows by accretion, with the addition of short straight lines and curves which sprout from the existing design. The figure vanishes and the process begins again with a new pattern, each cycle lasting one or two seconds. The complete figures are drawn in a vaguely Art Deco style and could be said to resemble any number of things, an ear, a harp, panpipes, a grand piano with trombones, and so on, only highly stylized. The tone is playful and hypnotic.

Documentary THE FIRST SEA sets focus on Wafaa and Raneen, two West Bank teen agers who, along with a group of other young Palestinians, are invited by an NGO to spend a day at the beach – in Israel. Although they live nearby, an impenetrable barrier has always made it impossible for them to go there. Is this trip a fantasy or a window on the future?
For Wafaa and Raneen the sea is just 40 kilometers away from their house in the West Bank, but the two 12 year old girls don’t have permits to cross the border into Israel. This changes when a group of peace activists organize a day trip to the coast of Tel Aviv.
Wafaa is excited about her first visit to Israel, a country she has only ever heard stories about. Raneen, however, will not accompany her, as she has often experienced violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and people from her village. She refuses to accept an invitation from anybody occupying her family’s country. Despite such skeptical voices, the packed coach travels over the border to the beach, and the Palestinian guests are soon splashing around in the cool water with their Israeli hosts.
Meanwhile, with only a view over the huge wall to Israel, Raneen starts protesting in her village. With this film, documentary filmmaker Clara Trischler not only presents the problems of the Israeli settlement policy from a new and unusual perspective, but also highlights the contrast of pro-Palestinian projects. This is a story about the magic of first times.
"For me the story started in 2009, when my former Israeli flat mate told me about the initiative for Palestinians to be able to travel to the sea, for the first time in their lives. Something about this story touched me, the surreal image of seemingly hostile groups spending a day on the beach together…" (Director's Statement)

OH YEAH, SHE PERFORMS! is an Austrian doc about four extraordinary women pursuing the same dream: composing, producing and living from their own music – without compromising their ideals. The film was nominated for an Austrian Film Award.
Excitement back-stage, adrenalin rush on-stage, band’s daily routine off-stage. Four young women connected in one vision: to compose and produce music, and to be able to live on it without compromise. Gustav, Clara Luzia, Teresa Rotschopf and Luise Pop on their way through the ups and downs of a self-chosen dream. A film about female musicians.

EVOLUTION OF VIOLENCE was nominated for the Austrian Film Award. This documentary examines the omnipresent violence in today's Guatemala, a country more dangerous than Iraq. The shadow of the 36 year long war is still felt. “An important work.” (ray Filmmagazin)
Guatemala. The war ended long ago. Though people want to forget it, the violence continues, and it has spread throughout the society like cancer. Each day, journalists wait to report on the next murder victim, and a social worker helps the relatives of women who have been killed. The global hunger for cheap resources has been another cause of violence, and a war over bananas has taken on a life of its own. The society suffers from the aftermath of the 36-year civil war. Mass graves are found in the mountains, former rebels mourn their comrades, and a war criminal has nightmares about all the things he's done. Peace continues to elude Guatemala.

ELEKTRO MOSKVA is the strange but true story of the evolution of Soviet and Russian electronic music against a backdrop of revolutionary politics, social upheaval, and totalitarian control. “Droll and infectiously lively tribute to pioneers of futuristic sounds.” (Hollywood Reporter)
From the invention of the world’s first electronic instrument by Leon Theremin in 1928, to avant-garde musicians of the 1970s scavenging contraband parts from KGB spying equipment, to modern day circuit-benders in cramped Moscow flats turning discarded toys into bizarre instruments, ELEKTRO MOSKVA by Elena Tikhnova and Dominik Spritzendörfer chronicles almost a century of freethinking musicians, artists, and inventors who turned the economic hardships of the Soviet system into some of the strangest and most mind-expanding sounds and instruments ever devised. The film features rare footage of the godfather of electronic music, Leon Theremin.
Meet gregarious junk peddlers who specialize in scouring the countryside for long-forgotten analog synths from the days of Sputnik. Learn about the bizarre ANS synthesizer, which is “played” by scratching images onto glass plates that are then turned into music. Hear some of the weirdest and most haunting music ever electrified into existence.
ELEKTRO MOSKVA is the story of the Soviet synthesizer turned into an allegory of everyday life under the Soviet system: nothing works, but you have to make the best of it. (Maurice Moore)

Austrian found footage film pioneer Peter Tscherkassky processes film clips with the optical printer to unearths their hidden meanings. The films assembled in FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM sample the Brothers Lumière and Science Fiction flicks.
FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM compiles six short films by Peter Tscherkassky, including his internationally acclaimed found footage trilogy - L'ARRIVÉE, OUTER SPACE, DREAM WORK.
“A confrontation with the codes of narrative-representational cinema is one of Peter Tscherkassky´s constant concerns. If one attempts to distill a constant from his films, then this must surely be the oscillation between the abstract and the concrete, between the dry and the sensual, which is the source of energy of his work. The question of belly or brain is one which Tscherkassky stopped asking long ago - for ultimately sobriety is the route to ecstasy.”
(Gabriele Jutz)
Films:
L´arrivée
Outer Space
Dream Work
Manufraktur
Motion Picture (La Sortie Des Ouvriers de l´usine Lumière à Lyon)
Get Ready

Structuralist filmmaker Kurt Kren was one of the most influential audiovisual artists of the post war avantgarde. STRUCTURAL FILMS compiles Kren's early works from the late 1950s to 1970s in which he explores the formal properties of the moving image medium. The minimalist, often abstract works sometimes follow mathematical rules and principles while still creating an aesthetic effect.
“Kurt Kren’s achievements with regard to the montage of short cuts in his early works was many years ahead of the rest of the (film-)world, in both form and content. Kurt Kren was a pioneer: an avant-gardist in the classic and best sense of the word. A filmmaker who knows how to thnk in images like few other in his trade, and who realized these images in films that are among the „most beautiful“ and – if it’s important – „most important“ in cinematic history. ” (Peter Tscherkassky)
Films:
1/57 Versuch mit synthetischem Ton
2/60 48 Köpfe aus dem Szondi-Test
3/60 Bäume im Herbst
4/61 Mauern Pos.–Neg. und weg
5/62 Fenstergucker, Abfall etc.
11/65 Bild Helga Philipp
15/67 TV
17/68 Grün-Rot
20/68 Schatzi
28/73 Zeitaufnahme(n)
31/75 Asyl
32/76 An W+B
36/78 Rischart
37/78 Tree Again
38/79 Sentimental Punk
49/95 Tausendjahrekino

The film FORST bridges reality, activism and fantasy. FORST is a documentary with fictitious elements about a mysterious group of outcasts in the forest. This 50-minute film was awarded the "best short documentary prize" at the Graz Diagonale film festival.
FORST is a portrait of a forest in the middle of Europe that harbors a community of banished people, set beyond urban life and civilization – a stranded world. In FORST, the outcasts proclaim their own truth and tell the story of their empowerment. For slowly they become aware of their identities as political refugees and they begin drawing liberation plans. FORST is unsettling and leaves thousands of questions unanswered. It documents a struggle at the front line of hardened opinions, the struggle of who defines reality. The filmmakers' view confronts the audience's view by being provocative, insolent and belligerent. (Amon Brandt)

In QVID TVM, Austria's flamboyant all-round artist Mara Mattuschka (BALLHEAD) takes us to a house of art in her first full-length feature film and category-defying cinematic artwork.
After her tour through a burning palace (BURNING PALACE, 2009), Mattuschka leads us to the fantastic of a typically Austrian sort. We can guess that the film will allow us Freudian-trained glances into souls stricken with neurosis. We are taken to a building with many rooms full of artistic eccentrics: the masochistic art historian, the music playing twins, the dubious hermit, the performance troupe inspired by Michelangelo. In wonderful elegies, Mattuschka shows artistic life without mental barriers. Only one person is not allowed in: the shady gallery owner, who, apparently, is only interested in fraudulent profiteering. For Art, which is enslaved on the market, Mattuschka seems to say, there is no room in her building. (Andrea Braidt)

In TEHRAN LOST & FOUND, filmmaker Ascan Breuer and his wife Ariane, whose family left Iran before the revolution, (re)discover the Iranian capital. This short documentary shows how time and political upheaval change a city.
The documentary is not a travel film as such. Its charm lies not in the expansive but in the ephemeral, in an attitude of passing through. On the one hand, an impression of a lively oriental metropolis is created. On the other hand TEHRAN LOST & FOUND belongs entirely to Ariane who verifies her self-conception as a member of the second generation against a controversial reality. The house, which the family was dispossessed from, a vague feeling of paranoia on the streets and all the disparate images of the city during the day, contrast with a sort of self-questioning in the evening. The film creates an awareness for contradictions, from which hybrid identities are generated, so that in the end, one ends up in a different place than at the starting point. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

Shisha talking... Lebanon in 2011: people smoke their shisha and discuss sports, the Arab spring or Gaddafi's fortune. BEIRUT BLEND, a 28-minute documentary by Fritz Ofner, takes us there. Clearly an homage to Jim Jarmusch's 'Coffee and Cigarettes'. Shown at Nyon (Visions du Réel) and at Graz.
For nearly half an hour, the film observes people who are inspired by the tobacco they inhale to communicate, philosophize and argue with one another.
“Fritz Ofner's Film mixes the personal with the political, the anecdotal with with the concrete, the expression of opinions with the presence of material locations. Clearly an homage to Jim Jarmusch's 'Coffee and Cigarettes', BEIRUT BLEND is also a historical document about things, opinions and a particular way of communicating via the medium of the shisha.” (Alejandro Bachmann)

People who collect documents and objects from times gone by and define themselves through investigating the past are the focus of the documentary TRACE. Their hoarding of memories and things keeps alive a barely remembered past.
Relative to the society he lives in, Helmut Weber, the protagonist of TRACE, Krisztina Kerekes’ documentary film debut, is a man connected to the past. For him, traces are mostly important memories, such as smells from one’s childhood, whether grandma’s Sunday dinner or incense in church.
Helmut Weber enjoys a leisurely life between his farm and his health food store. People come to visit him in his "nest", either to chat or to stock up on vegetables from Weber’s garden. It is the scents of childhood that Weber still smells, his “traces”, as he calls them. They help him find his way back: to himself and to the world of his past experience.

The implosion of a nuclear family is hauntingly told in Austrian drama FOLLOW ME. The film was shown at the Berlinale and won an award for best production design at the Diagonale in Graz. “The digital black-and-white lensing in widescreen is beautifully executed by writer-helmer-lenser-producer Johannes Hammel, and the underlying sense of unease [is] palpable, making this an auspicious feature debut.” – Variety
Mrs. Blumenthal lives in a gloomy harbor district together with her husband and their sons Pius and Roman. She suffers from a serious phobia, caused by the traumatic accident of her elder son Pius, which took a long time for him to overcome. there are also marriage problems and memories from her childhood that contribute to her woes. She finds herself unable to socialize with other people and barricades herself in her dark apartment, haunted by hallucinations, memories and claustrophobia.

COLONNADE PARK is the final documentary in Heidrun Holzfeind's (BEHIND THE IRON GATE) trilogy about modern domestic architecture. Here she turns to America and Mies van der Rohe's Colonnade apartment buildings in Newark, New Jersey.
Heidrun Holzfeind's direct storytelling is impressive. Built in the 1950's to lure the upper middle class back into the center of Newark, the building boasts a turbulent history, which, beyond urban development, tells the story of social upheaval. The film examines the utopian project COLONNADE PARK by detailing the daily lives of the people who live there. Holzfeid looks at their environment and palpably renders the appropriation and transformation of space. Not a few of the inhabitants are passionate collectors, which results in the contrast of a functional outward appearance and an almost museum-like landscape of individual idiosyncrasies on the inside. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

How do women in Austria and Germany deal with the Nazi past of their family members? In the doc LOVE HISTORY by the Klub Zwei collective (PHAIDON), descendants of Nazi perpetrators explore this aspect of their own pasts. The film was shown at the festival “Visions du réel” in Nyon.
Seven women, mostly relatives of SS officers, research their national socialist family history and explore how this “negative heritage” (Jean Améry) influences their thinking and acting but also their romantic life. The subject of the after effects of national socialism in descendants of the perpetrators has hardly ever been elaborated so far. This film by the director duo “Klub Zwei” (“Club Two”, consisting of Simone Bader and Jo Schmeiser) shows the female protagonists in public spaces in Vienna, in architectures of the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and the first decade of the new millennium. These places stand for the approach to national socialism in a particular decade. The locations refer to historical contexts but also bear personal significance to the individual protagonists.

In doc BEHIND THE IRON GATE Heidrun Holzfeind portrays what was once considered a showcase of communist architecture. This portrait of everyday life in a central Warsaw city district looks at today's Poland and also documents racist and anti-Semitic attitudes.
The nineteen, fifteen-story tower blocks of the residential complex "Za Żelazną Bramą" (Behind the Iron Gate) were built from 1965 to 1972 for a total of 25,000 residents. However, time has long overtaken the former modernism of the tower blocks. Holzfeind tracks down such paths through history by tracing the heritage of functionalist architecture and its current role within Warsaw's social fabric. Za Żelazną Bramą was built on the ruins of the former ghetto. There is even a synagogue located between the buildings, which is one of the reasons why several Jewish families have moved back again in recent years. But the documentary also focuses on other current migratory movements, for example, Vietnamese youth are asked about their experiences in the buildings, where the majority of the residents are Polish. (Patricia Grzonka)
The film was shown at a number of festivals, among others in Linz, Bonn oder Milan.

The documentary MORE THAN JUST WORDS recounts the solidary expedition to Nicaragua in 1984 by left wing Austrian activists. The director unites archive material with recent interviews to reconstruct the journey. Shown at the Diagonale in Graz.
In February of 1984, an oddly assorted group of Austrian activists sets off to Nicaragua. The work brigade “February 1934” wants to build a community center in the southern part of the country, in the spirit of international solidarity with the Sandinistas. In February of 1934, workers opposed fascism for the first time in Austria, now Austrian labor force is supposed to put a halt to US imperialism. It is striking, how disparate the activists are, coming from different political backgrounds. Also, their personal experiences and impressions differ considerably. The Austrian border between marxism and liberation theology loses itself historically in the Nicaraguan jungle. (Michael Pekler)

Unemployment... Helmut and Sieglinde are over fifty and already considered unemployable. What about young people trying to find work? The documentary JOBCENTER reflects on the job market, on how people can be helped, and on abuses of power.
Helmut and Sieglinde are over fifty. They are considered unemployable or unattractive in the eyes of the labor market. At the other end of the spectrum are Martin, Mathias and Atafa who are at the beginning of their working lives. JOBCENTER shows us a how job training works in Austria. Whose interests are served here? This documentary by Austrian talent Angela Summereder played at the Viennale in Vienna.

The documentary OCEANUL MARE portrays three Chinese men who emigrated to Bucharest in the early 1990s and their involvement with the largest Chinese market in Europe. The film won the 2009 3-SAT TV prize in Duisburg.
In its episodic structure, OCEANUL MARE, which uses a sea metaphor throughout, accompanies its protagonists in their daily life financial undertakings. The film illustrates the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land and looks at cultural displacement and the challenges faced when one dives into the unknown.

Ella Raidel's short PLAY LIFE SERIES mashes up the visual cliches and conventions of the Chinese soap opera. In the episodes Fight, Cry, Love, and Art, swordsmen whirl through the air and emotions are larger than life. But before we get swept up in the fantasy, Raidel pulls back and reveals the entire film set. A 'making of' of collective desire.

The odyssey of an illegal Georgian expatriate in Austria is told in the drama SUZIE WASHINGTON. The young woman keeps a lot of people busy during her journey and has to fight Austrian bureaucracy.
Nana Iaschwili, citizen of the former Soviet Union, lands at the Viennese airport. Her actual destination is the US, but she is refused her flight because her visa turns out to be a fake. Nana gets arrested, but manages to flee before being expelled. Now her odyssey through Austria and Germany begins and with her are ever changing accomplices. After losing her baggage and money, she finds refuge in a cabin in Germany whose owner would like her to stay with him. But Nana has other plans... Directed by Florian Flicker.

OPERATION SPRING is a documentary thriller about a large scale operation aimed at Africans who were accused in Austria of being members of a world wide Nigerian drug mafia. New investigative methods were tested and new laws were introduced to secure convictions. The plan was for all of the 120 accused to be found guilty at any price. They never had a chance at a fair trail...
“OPERATION SPRING“ was the name of large scale police operation in Austria. It was the first eavesdropping campaign based on electronic wiretapping. It led to lawsuits against 120 people. This film uncovers questionable operation procedures and surveillance methods, and flagrant incongruities in the presented evidence that were connected to this “great surveillance” operation .